A Walk In Eternity
by RoxieFlash
Summary: This message will appear if I'm gone, and the TARDIS detects a kind of energy. Right now she's found a crack, and she's reaching across it, locking onto herself. She's already sized it up, and is preparing for a jump. That jump should bring you back to me. The other me, the Time Lord one. But I have no idea what he'll be like. What he's been through. (BroadchurchxDoctor Who)
1. Chapter 1

Rose traced her fingers along the edges of a fish cut out of construction paper, given brightly colored scales and a smile with markers. It was an odd place for a media briefing, a primary school, but Broadchurch was small, it's resources limited. The tragedy was awful, but it seemed…amplified, surrounded by bongo drums and crayon drawings and grinning construction-paper fish.

It would be the sort of place you'd find him, she thought. So many people hurting, a mystery to be solved, and superhuman compassion needed to solve it with as many hearts as possible intact. It was the sort of thing he thrived on, that_they_ thrived on together. Conditions right for summoning one mad, time, travelling alien: check.

Rose giggled to herself, a soft, half-mad sound, her fingers climbing up to twine around the three small circlets on a chain dangling between her breasts. She understood him better now than she ever had, living all these years without him, why he always told her things with his actions because he couldn't help it, before he told her with his words because he chose to. Hope was something she had to fight for in the dim lighting of the console room when the latest companion had gone and the only company was the faint hum of the TARDIS in her mind.

So Rose didn't hope, not for this. Instead, she did what they did best; stuck her nose in where it wasn't asked for and felt around for the first sign of trouble.

* * *

_She felt it a split-second before it happened; the TARDIS, gathering up her energy, light and movement and sound pulling in from every corner of the infinite ship to coil at it's heart. The Cloister Bell sounded and Rose felt the reverberation in her chest; she spun around the console, frantic as she searched for the right switch to flip, the right button to press to make it all right. He had always been so much better at this than she was._

_But then he flickered to life in front of her; the Doctor, as she remembered him last, hands tucked in his pockets and bouncing back and forth on his heels. His hair still stuck up at odd ends, but it was streaked with grey; his eyes were still merry and bright and utterly beautiful, but there were little crinkly laugh lines around them, from a long and happy life._

_The hologram looked at her like her husband had – warm and reverent and utterly grateful that she had chosen to spend her life with him._

"_Rose Tyler," it said, and the TARDIS lurched. Rose flailed to anchor herself on the jump seat, but her eyes never left the Doctor._

"_Rose Tyler, this is Emergency Programme One-point-One. If the TARDIS is showing you this message, then the – outcome – that we discussed has occurred. I'm so sorry, Rose." _

_The hologram reached towards her like he wanted to take her hand; reflexively, Rose's hand on the jump seat scooted forward a little, curled into the leather of the seat and left little crescent-shaped marks from her fingernails._

"_I tried so hard, in every way I knew, to stay with you. I – found a solution, sort of, but you aren't going to like it."_

_He was wearing the look, the you-can't look, the does-it-need-saying look. A look, she learned, that he was steeling himself to take an action he knew she was going to hit him for, later._

"_This message is programmed to appear if the TARDIS detects a kind of energy. Right now the TARDIS has found a crack – and she's reaching across it, locking onto herself. She's already sized it up, and is preparing for a jump. That jump should – by all my calculations – bring you back to me. The other me, the Time Lord one._

_I don't know what state he's in. I don't know if he's regenerated. You may not be able to find him. But if you want, I'm offering you a choice."_

_Tears welled in Rose's eyes. Seeing him didn't upset her; The TARDIS voice interface still took his form sometimes, she thought, in mourning, and it had never bothered her, had always been a great comfort, because she had a human memory and a Time Lord's lifespan, and this way she would never, ever forget his face. In the two centuries since his death, he'd never had time to grow fuzzy in her mind and she was so, so grateful._

_But the choice._

"_See the blue button, there?" she looked to where he gestured, ran her fingers lightly over a small, round protrusion flashing blue._

"_If you press it, the cycle will be aborted. You'll stay where you are, and nothing will change."_

"_But the red one, next to the zig-zag plotter? If you press it, the TARDIS will jump through the crack. I've no way to know what you'll find, but – perhaps it's better than nothing. Maybe you've moved on, and I'm only a memory. Or maybe you're alone," his voice broke; Rose's fingers crept towards him another inch. "I suppose – I've got to go, now, can't keep you waiting or you'll get suspicious, clever girl."_

_She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. The TARDIS seemed to wrap around her like the arms of an old friend, and Rose, for the first time in years, let open the box in her heart where she'd carefully tucked away the woman who had relied on this man to breathe._

_When she opened her eyes the hologram had not shut off; he was staring at her like he could see her, and she remembered vividly the coolness of leather and the roughness of his long overcoat under her cheek, the feel of time burning in her veins, the desperation of a kiss after years of separation._

_"I don't know where I am right now, Rose," he said in a voice rough with emotion. "But it's a poorer place without you in it."_

_Then the hologram clicked off, as though he couldn't bear it any longer, and Rose stared down at the console underneath her hands. Her fingers drifted across the blue one for a moment; she had friends in this universe, people she loved, people she would miss desperately. But they would pass out from under her like he had once feared she'd do._

_Taking a deep breath, stared at the place where he'd once been, bringing her hand down on the red button._

_"Allons-y!"_

* * *

Behind her, more people were starting to shuffle in. She'd gotten here early, earlier even than the police, and forgone one of the orange plastic seats for the standing room in the back. She didn't turn, not even when other reporters started to file in, not even when someone offered her a coffee. She didn't know what the people around her saw when they glanced at the blank piece of paper pinned to her chest, but it was obviously something impressive enough that a disapproving glance was enough to send most scurrying.

There were reporters setting up cameras, the scooting of chairs, the hush of whispers. The hush grew louder, just as Rose was tracing her fingers along another childish art project – a jellyfish this time – and grew quiet just as quickly.

She knew from the sound that the police were here, that among them, most definitely, would be Detective Inspector Alec Hardy. Knew that he was probably was taking his seat at the front of the room, perhaps waiting patiently while the Chief Superintendent made her introductions. Her heart pounded in her throat as she tried to muster the courage to turn, because it couldn't be him.

If it was him, he'd have run to her by now.

* * *

_They landed on the beach._

_It was a deceptively soft landing, for all the jarring tumble the jump through had been. When she pulled open the doors to reveal rickety wooden walls, the old girl mumbled a soft apology in her mind. She was exhausted, poor love, Rose thought as she watched the lights of the interior flicker out and the old girl drift into sleep. She'd earned a rest._

_Even from inside the shack where the TARDIS had tucked herself away, Rose could hear the surf, smell salt on the air. The town, she soon learned, was called Broadchurch – a resort in Dorset, old but not decrepit, beautiful, but not too flash._

_She liked it immediately._

_With an unlimited credit card and the psychic paper she set herself up at an inn called the Traders', made friendly chit-chat with the owner, who was called Becca. During the first few days she set herself up with new clothes – beachy t-shirts and ripped jeans and a fitted leather jacket, for when the weather was frigid – and on impulse bought a box of dye and coaxed her naturally dark hair back into bleach-blonde in the sink of her hotel room._

_She was feeling much more like Rose Tyler by the third day than she had in a long time, curled up in the plastic booth of a chippy and browsing the internet on her new laptop for signs of the Doctor. It was the year 2012, only a few years after she'd left, but she was coming up empty._

_She was feeling so much like Rose Tyler, in fact, that she was starting to grump at the Doctor for not being where he said he'd be._

_She told herself she'd know if he'd regenerated. That no matter what face he wore, she'd know it, though as time ticked by she started to examine the light behind every man's eyes – and even a few women – to see if she recognized it._

_She'd wonder later if, that day, he was feeling more like the Doctor than he had in a long time, too, because he chose the most unceremonious moment – her with her mouth open and a chip halfway hanging out – to walk by the window of the chippy._

* * *

"I am going to hand over now to our senior investigator, DI Alec Hardy."

She still faced the wall, though she was turned so that, just out of the corner of her eye, she could see a skinny man in a suit addressing the small crowd. He was saying things about tragedy, about advice to parents, but she couldn't hear him. All she heard was the echo of a memory.

_"Rose, I would like you to meet her Majesty, Queen Victoria, Empress of India and protector of the faith."_

"_She's a feral child. I bought her for sixpence in old London Town."_

"_How many prisms has it got? Way too many! But it's…pretty."_

The world spun around her; Rose swallowed and caught her balance by laying her hand flat against the wall. Taking a deep breath, she turned her head,

"There will be no hiding place for Danny's killer. We will catch whoever did this."

and looked into the intense eyes of the Doctor, who didn't see her at all.


	2. Chapter 2

"Off on a wander, Detective Inspector?"

She had not intended to follow him. Really she hadn't. The walk she was currently on had even been an accident – the result of sleeplessness and not any real inclination to explore outside of Broadchurch proper. She was fine with the shops and the houses, but even after so much time had passed, Rose still hadn't quite made her peace with beaches.

The cliffs were different, though. She was wandering along them, her heart full of goodbyes she'd said to him in places like this, when she noticed him, like he'd been summoned straight out of her memories. He looked on a mission, carefully storing away every blade of grass and every rock underneath his feet as he walked, and didn't even seem to notice her.

She half expected to see him turn and grin that secret grin that meant there was a secret only the two of them knew, to admonish her for not realizing that of course, of course it was a joke, and Rose Tyler, _why aren't you kissing me?_

But he just squinted at her.

"Can I help you?"

She can't help the way her heart plummets, but she covers it up with a cheeky grin.

"On a wander myself," said Rose, jamming her hands in her pockets. "Just thought I'd say hello, is all."

"Well," he paused for a moment. "I've got…things…to be doing, so."

She wasn't about to let him go, not with so much she didn't know yet. He didn't know her, that much was clear. Was he hurt, then? Had something happened so that he'd lost his memory? Where was the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver? He didn't recognize her, but was he still the Doctor?

The thought crossed her mind for a moment that he might not even _be_ the Doctor, just a man with the same face. It was possible, it had happened with that Gwen, something-something genetic multiplicity, he'd called it.

But no. After the jump through universes, Emergency Programme One-point-bloody-One, and DI Hardy looking at her with the Doctor's patented _you've-just-drooled-on-your-shirt-Rose-Tyler _face - there were too many coincidences.

"DI Hardy, are you tellin' me to bugger off?"

"Sort of, yeah. Are you going to tell me who the hell you are?"

"Sort of, yeah."

She waited for a smile that never came; the way a moment would break open like some precious secret between them. What she got was the barest hint of a smirk and a raspy laugh that could have been mistaken for a cough, if she hadn't known him, not the Doctor's wild chuckling but something belonging to a man much soberer and more tired.

It occurred to her, suddenly, that he still looked _tired. _The day before she'd just attributed it to the stress of a long day, but he looked worse, if it were possible, with dark circles rimming his eyes, starkly visible in the morning light.

"Rose, s'my name. Rose Tyler."

"You were at the briefing."

"Yeah, I was. I'm a -" she scrambled for a plausible alibi. "travel blogger, restaurant reviews and things, just here for the weekend. Press pass barely got me in."

His eyes went suddenly suspicious and flat; the near-permanent crease between his eyebrows deepening slightly.

"Oh no, I'm not here to report. Just wanted to see if I could help, I suppose. S'terrible, that happenin' to that little boy."

The cover story was weak – mentally, she smacked herself for providing him with a story he could easily verify wasn't true at all. Blindly, she grasped for something to say to put him at ease, but his trust, once lost, wasn't easily regained.

"So you're a reporter who doesn't want to report?"

There was something terribly disappointing about not being able to see the Doctor's eyebrows. . Rose was sure, right about now, that underneath DI Hardy's unkempt mop, the Doctor's inhuman eyebrows were shooting nearly to the edge of his hairline.

"I'm -"

"Pardon me, Miss Tyler. I've got work to do."

He spun on his heel and continued up the cliffs, towards the cabin that was barely visible in the distance.

* * *

When Rose returned to the TARDIS, there was a steaming cup of black tea on a small table next to the jump seat, next to a napkin and a small pile of her favorite biscuits.

"Oh, love," Rose smiling softly and patting the jump seat. "Feeling better, are we?"

The time machine twittered an assent, and Rose took her tea, settling into the jump seat and leaning forward so she could have a peek at the monitor. "Let's see what you can tell us about Time Lord amnesia, eh?"

The older records – the ones re-grown from the original TARDIS – were done in Gallifreyan, and Rose's knowledge was passing enough to know, for example, seven or eight different ways to swear when you'd accidentally jumped forward four _years_ instead of four _months_, and her knowledge ran the entire gamut of what constituted trashy Time Lord bedroom talk, but she had no idea how to decipher the Doctor's mad filing system.

It took two hours before the machine took pity on her and queued up a video on the monitor.

Rose leaned back in the jump seat and sipped cold tea while she watched the Doctor explain to Martha Jones about a watch, about a family and a man named John Smith and not eating pears. Rose added another mark to the tally of times she wished she'd been able to spend more time with Martha – the Doctor had been full of stories about Donna, but about Martha she knew very little. She was a medical student, her mother had slapped him once (hah!), and she was brilliant.

And endlessly patient, if the video were any indication. Practically fearless, too.

"Only the best", Rose murmured. The TARDIS made a sound like windchimes; apparently she had liked Martha, too. Rose played the video again.

"_…don't let me hurt anyone. We can't have that, but you know what humans are like." _

_"…but John Smith is a character I've made up, but I won't know that; I'll think I am him, and he might do something stupid like eat a pear…"_

"_…if anything goes wrong, if they find us, Martha, then you know what to do. Open the watch."_

When his voice faded a second time, it was replaced by the Doctor and Martha – ghostly holograms dancing around the console, the Doctor, eyes wide and panicked as he held up a silver pocketwatch.

"Okay, I get it," Rose set her mug down. "He's changed himself with the pocketwatch thing. But _why? _Is there something dangerous? Do I need to be worried?"

There appeared on the monitor the image of something bright – a flame, it looked like – against a dark background. Leaning forward Rose saw that it was a recording of a boat lit on fire, in the middle of the ocean, with a timestamp marked two days from now.

One of the first things she'd learned, on the first trip out she'd taken in which the Doctor wasn't trying to scare her away with exploding planets and bitchy trampolines, was that the TARDIS existed…everywhen. Sometimes she'd pick up stray frequencies from the past or more often a possible future, in which Rose's phone would ring and it would be her mum three years ago, or the Doctor would conveniently find a note from himself reminding him that the future was a bleak place when they ran out of bananas.

Now, apparently, she was seeing a burning boat from the future that was somehow relevant to the fact that the Doctor had turned himself human (and apparently regressed a regeneration in the process).

The time stamp froze and then stuttered; instead of two days in the future, it now read one day in the past. Still a boat, though this time not on fire, Rose watched as someone directed the boat onto the beach, and then got out, throwing something small and heavy looking over its shoulder.

The figure moved a little more into the moonlight; it was a man, definitely, bald head, bent over. The burden on his shoulder resolved itself into a form with arms and legs.

Small ones.

Rose covered her mouth as she watched the man arrange the boy's body on the beach. Slowly, reverently, he passed a hand over the boy's body, and then turned and climbed back into the boat. The screen froze, and after a moment an indicator began to flash in a square that outlined the shape of the man and the boat.

[SONIC TECHNOLOGY DETECTED]

"Well," said Rose, running a hand over her eyes. "Shit."


	3. Chapter 3

He was staying at the Traders'.

She had no idea how she'd missed him, because as far as she and the TARDIS could tell, Alec Hardy had been in Broadchurch for just over a week, and Rose had been there for at least two. He hadn't been down to breakfast, nor had she bumped into him at the bar or on the stairs. Had he been properly the Doctor, his trademark chattering would have filled the place — she could just see him, all elbows and propped up against the bar, charming Becca into free drinks and all the information he could possibly want about anyone in Broadchurch who struck his fancy.

Of course, if he'd properly been the Doctor, she would have been climbing the stairs to a bed full of gangly limbs and freckled shoulders — to a mole she'd claimed in the name of Rose Tyler quite a long time ago, and the warm sound of his light snoring in her ear.

It had driven her batty, once — now, she spent the last three steps dragging her fingernails along the stair railing and trying to remember what it sounded like.

Rose was almost to the door of her room when she noticed him, staring at a piece of paper in one hand and the other resting lightly over his chest. He looked pale — underneath the unkempt beard he was sporting his cheeks were hollower than she'd ever seen them, and his hair lay flat on his head.

He looked sick, and Rose's heart twisted up in her chest.

It was strange, so strange, to see him like this — he had always been just a bit vain, this version of the Doctor, preening in the mirror, playing with his hair and straightening his (often numerous) collars. Detective Inspector Hardy's shirt collar was crooked, sticking up a bit on the right side, and Rose's fingers ached to smooth it down, to muss his hair a bit, give it a good reason to stand on end.

An ache began to crawl up her throat, settling behind her eyes, clawing in her stomach. Rose dug her fingernails into her palm to keep the tears at bay, straightening her hair with the other hand and moving to push the door open. She should, by all rights, go and tell him everything — the boat, and the boy, the TARDIS, the watch, the fact that she'd forgotten, _she'd forgotten_that he had one ear that was shaped differently than the other and at the moment it seemed like the most criminal thing she'd ever done in her life.

Rose turned from him. She took one deep, achey breath, and reached for the silver doorknob, when she heard the soft clearing of a throat.

He was frozen at the top of the stairs, his eyes fixed on her. Not narrowed in suspicion, not yet, but Rose knew all of the Doctor's faces — he recognized her, but only as part of an equation he was trying to solve, a particularly stubborn bit of puzzle he didn't know what to do with, yet.

She offered him a tentative smile. "Good night, Detective Inspector."

He didn't smile back. She was beginning to wonder if Detective Inspector Hardy remembered the Doctor's smile at all.

"Good night, Miss Tyler."

* * *

The next morning, after a good cry and a good sleep, Rose knew exactly what to do.

She climbed into the claw-footed tub in her ensuite mumbling her plans to herself; she ticked off a list of steps she needed to take while she dried her hair, and a list of things she would need from the TARDIS while she had her breakfast. It was only tea and toast with orange marmalade, but for some reason it tasted better than anything she'd had since she set foot in this town.

The Doctor was staying at the Traders'. Which meant the Doctor, who had an alter ego and a day job and a case to solve, would leave his things behind in the room conveniently located two doors down from her own. His things — which, possibly, included a Time Lord fob watch that contained his entire personality inside.

And Rose Tyler, having been the wife of an intergalactic political faux-pas waiting to happen for the better part of five centuries, knew her way around a lockpick. She was, she decided, going to have a good yell at the pocketwatch while she had the chance to get a word in edgewise, but knowing him, the damn thing was going to be chatty if only by proxy.

There were a few things that needed to be taken care of, first. Another trip to the TARDIS was going to be in order, for the sorts of things she need to use to pick a lock and not get caught, and then there was the fact that this was a hotel, not his permanent residence, and she had to be fully prepared that it wasn't going to be there, even if she got in and out without being detected. If she were lucky, though, there would be some clue as to where he'd lived before, and she could set out looking for the watch that way.

Still, in a fit of optimism, she added _suit, trainers_, and, grinning a bit madly to herself with her tongue between her teeth, _hair gel_ to her list with a flourish.

There was also the matter of Danny Latimer. Something had killed him, and the TARDIS had, indirectly, implied that the something was alien. Assuming that this all wasn't going to be resolved by the end of the day, he'd need the information she'd been given about the boat, and, considering he was human, he'd need some sort of protection.

With one hand, Rose popped the last crunchy corner of toast with marmalade into her mouth, and with the other she scribbled _sonic screwdriver_.


	4. Chapter 4

If it were possible, the police headquarters seemed smaller on the inside. From the street it wasn't so bad, but once Rose swung the door open, she found that the hallways were small and cramped, and she had to flash the psychic paper and bat her eyelashes two receptionists behind two different sheets of glass before they finally let her in to the police station proper.

The tiny hallway led out into a wide room with lots of desks where officers were hunched over computers or clipboards, scribbling and typing. In one corner there was a markerboard where the investigation was mapped out in what was most definitely the Doctor's laughably stereotypical handwriting. No one seemed to give her a second glance, in here, all so wrapped up in the case.

She had no idea how she was going to go about this; the morning's trip to the TARDIS had yielded a bag neatly packed with his clothes and the sonic screwdriver, but absolutely nothing to give the Doctor as proof of the alien nature of Danny Latimer's murder. There was the video on board the TARDIS, of course, but in order to see him she'd have to get him _on _the TARDIS, and that was entirely a different feat.

So. Time to improvise. She cast her eyes around until she found him, tucked away in a back office with the blinds drawn but the door open, talking with a short, curly-haired woman whom Rose hadn't met. They were both so engaged in the conversation that they didn't see her approach until she knocked lightly on the door frame.

"Um, hello," she said with a shaky smile. "Can I come in?"

The woman offered her a genuine, if confused smile, but the Doctor's eyebrows shot upwards and he sat up straight in his chair.

"Miss Tyler."

The curly-haired woman immediately looked suspicious; whether it was because the Doctor knew her name or the fact that she wasn't one of the usual faces, it wasn't clear. Rose didn't know her, and she floundered for a title – she was likely a DS, but from her stance, heads-down, discussing a mystery with a mad, time-travelling alien in disguise, Rose's mind immediately reached for the word_companion, _and she struggled not to laugh aloud. Even when the Doctor wasn't himself, he was. She wondered if the other woman knew she'd already been collected.

"Look, D-Detective Inspector. I need to speak with you. About Danny."

The Doctor sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest with his hands tucked under each arm and looked at her, his expression chill and expectant – how odd it was, that he was so quiet, so still. His companion cast him a severe look and moved to close the door behind Rose.

"What," said the Doctor. "Do you know?"

Rose scrambled for a clever way to frame it, but under the Doctor's quiet intensity every speech she'd rehearsed bled away like sand in an hourglass. Nothing like getting it straight out, then.

"It's a boat, okay? Just…look for a boat."

"Excuse me?"

Rose ran her hand over her face. Brilliant. "I have this…thing," she said, scrambling for something to say as the Doctor's eyebrows climbed higher on his forehead. "I get messages from it."

"Oh, for god's sake–" he pinched the bridge of his nose. "First you're a _travel blogger_, and now you're – what? A _psychic?"_

Well. That was unexpected. The Doctor had always been quite good at coming up with cover stories on the fly; of course, of course he'd end up being the one to offer her the one she'd use on him. Rose made a noncommittal humming noise in the back of her throat and she saw the Doctor take it as confirmation that she considered herself a psychic, saw his eyes nearly roll straight into the ceiling.

Alec Hardy didn't believe in psychics then. Didn't matter; there was no backing out of it now, and it would give her a reason to be nosy without having to explain that she was keeping an eye out for her dead husband (who wasn't, and wasn't) who was tracking an alien killer (that she had no proof was alien).

"The killer used a boat," she said. Her voice was steadier now, calmer with the hard edge of truth behind it; she wouldn't lie to him, because that had always been a disaster, but she could give him the truth without giving him all of it. "No evidence in the grass, or the sand – just sailed the body right up to the shore and left it there. Evidence got all washed up."

'

"Who told you this? Where did you get this from?"

"I told you. I get messages."

* * *

Rose supposed she should have expected the interview room.

It was cold, goosebumps-and-shivers cold, and there was a cup of coffee on the table in front of her, the surface ripping in time with her tapping fingers. She had only sipped at it once; she wasn't thirsty, but noted absently that the coffee had been prepared the same way she liked her tea; with lots of milk and just a little sugar.

DS Miller – that was the woman's name, Ellie Miller, - was sitting across from her, arms folded, expression just a little less than blank as her partner spoke. Rose focused on her because it was hard to focus on the Doctor, whose expression was one she'd never seen him wear. That alone was disconcerting, because in _so many years_, she thought she knew all of his expressions. She'd assumed, to this point, that she knew every permutation of his face. But this one was completely shuttered. Where before, she might have been able to see him peeking out from behind Alec Hardy's eyes, she was suddenly on the opposite side of a cold, hard wall.

And she'd had quite enough of those, thanks ever so.

"You're saying that you've got some sort of – spirit guide – who wants us to know that Danny Latimer that Danny Latimer was put in a boat after he died."

"I didn't say she was a spirit guide, and yeah. Yeah, I did."

He quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh, it's a _she_, now is it? I want _you_to know that nothing offends me more than cranks wasting police time."

DS Miller didn't seem to be quite as agitated. She seemed to be studying Rose with barely-contained curiosity, her eyes flickering as a crease appeared between her brow. Unlike the Doctor – Hardy – who had written her off, Miller seemed to be just catching on to the fact that there was more to Rose than was obvious.

"Did the message happen before or after you met with DI Hardy yesterday morning?"

"After."

Ellie opened her mouth to say something else, but she was interrupted.

"I love this, it's wonderful. A reporter who doesn't want to report, giving us messages from spirits that aren't spirits!"

Rose laid her palm flat on the table in front of her, a little more forcefully than was really necessary. Some of the coffee splashed out, creating a tiny constellation of mocha-colored dots on the table in front of her. "Look, you don't wanna listen to me, you don't have to -"

"Oh, you're a _reluctant _psychic?" his voice, and Rose's temper, were rising. The Doctor, closed-off to _any_ idea, unwilling to think, to consider, didn't seem real. It was so out of character that it couldn't be, and suddenly Alec Hardy didn't seem like the Doctor wearing a different person as a disguise. He seemed, to Rose, like an intruder housed in the Doctor's body, a parasite inhabiting the most precious thing in the world to her, and she wanted him _out._

"A child has died, and you come in here with this self-indulgent _horseshit." _

Rose raised the coffee cup to her lips, but her hands were shaking; her stomach churned, and from the heat in her face she knew her face had bloomed a bright red. She didn't say anything, only stared, unflinching, into the Doctor's eyes, into_Alec Hardy's_ eyes. For a moment, she bared herself to him in the same way he had shut her out; for a moment Alec Hardy looked into the eyes of the Bad Wolf, the bride of the Last of the Time Lords, the woman who for the last two hundred years had turned grief into good by forging her way across the stars of another universe.

DS Miller shot her partner a cross look, and he looked away first. Rose took a deep swallow of the coffee, savoring the bitter taste, and put the cup down, pressing her lips together in an attempt to get her thoughts together.

"Did you ever meet Danny Latimer?"

"No."

"Do you know the family?"

"No, I never did."

"Do you have any concrete evidence relating to the death of Danny Latimer?"

"I don't."

DS Miller stopped the interview tape; both detectives were quiet for a moment. Hardy was wearing the Doctor's _preparing-for-a-speech_ face, getting himself good and worked up inside his own head, and he could, she decided, get good and bloody ready for a fight if he tried it.

"Do you know what happens around a murder, Miss Tyler? A whole industry grows -"

"Oh, spare me the sanctimonious bullshit, _Detective. _I can show myself out."

She scooted from the table; behind her, she distantly noted the splattering sound that meant her coffee had tipped over and spilled onto the floor. She didn't care, couldn't care – she was suddenly so full of all the reasons she had ever been angry with him – with _this_ him – that the world had shrunk entirely to the need to be out of this room, to be away from _him, _because if she did the things that came from her mouth would have her locked up in a mental institution so fast she'd never be able to do him any good.

Alone. He'd said, on the beach, that he wouldn't be alone. And that was the whole reason she'd ever had any peace in the other universe, the whole reason she'd been able to live a life that had been fantastic, because he had ensured her – both versions of him had done, in fact – that he wouldn't go on alone, go and do something that got himself killed.

And while he wasn't dead, he had gone and gotten himself locked behind the eyes of a man who didn't even remember who he was, a man she couldn't even shout at because he had no idea just how much of a complete arse he _was._

If she had anything to say about it, she _would_ have him back.

Her hand on the door handle, Rose took a wet, shaky breath, and turned.

"The blue box. You asked me where I got the message, well - I'm tellin' ya. The blue box. _Time and Relative Dimension in Space_. That's what it stands for."


	5. Chapter 5

_The quiet on the ship burns like ice. His every footstep echoes; his every heartsbeat rattles his brain like a thunderstorm. He drags his fingernails down metal railing just for the metallic zing of the scraping; he recites Shakespearean sonnets through the hundred-and-ninth just for the sound of his own voice. _

_This is what going mad feels like. _

_He knows because he's done it before, tripped down the spiraling path to blissful nonsense because there's too much pain in the sensible. He really should turn back, really should pilot Her somewhere safe, stumble into arms that know him - maybe Martha, maybe Sarah Jane. Oh, Sarah Jane. He misses his Sarah Jane. _

_A few twists and turns on the console and he'll be with her, and she'll listen like she always did and gently guide him back away from the dizzying pit, maybe laugh at him a bit. Maybe he'll put on an old scarf to make her smile. His fingers brush one of the mystifying levers and he almost does it, before a horrifying thought strikes him - what if she's gone? What if he gets it wrong, and he goes back, and she's gone? _

_He can't breathe. His lungs constrict and his chest feels like it's about to vibrate apart while his stomach violently protests as he snatches his hand back away from the lever like it's been burnt. Here, cradled in time, loss can't touch him - but he's suddenly paralyzed, unable to move for the fear of another loss._

_Another loss like __**hers.**_

_His mind doesn't process words right now, but he gulps in lungfuls of air and can't breathe anything but applegrass; he can't see anything but pink and yellow and the resonant hum of her timeline, fingers pleasantly tangled with his. For a moment his desperation and a timeline flare out before him in vibrant color, painted with the sounds of the cloister bell, with the ripping of the universes and her startled mouth gasping under his as the worlds shatter around them and the laws of time are his to command. It wouldn't need saying, then. _

_He rips his mind away from the possible future with a cry, and his fingers blindly reach for a piece of machinery that swings down from the time rotor to greet him like a noose. _

_He can't be allowed to go on._

* * *

Rose got little sleep that night.

It was now three days since Daniel Latimer's death, and all she'd seen since her encounter with the police was a suspicious glare from Detective Inspector Hardy as she descended the stairs for breakfast. Her gamble mentioning the TARDIS, it seemed, had failed - there was no more recognition in his eyes than there had been the day before.

She was beginning to think the entire strategy had been a mistake when when he cornered her in the empty bar as she was discarding the wrapper from her muffin.

"Miss Tyler."

"Yes?"

"I want you to know that I'm being very, very calm, and the only reason I'm being very, very calm is that I'm not sure you aren't a victim here."

There were papers sticking haphazardly out of the folder in his hand; a flick of his wrist and it fell open, revealing a printout of an old flyer she'd seen only once before, covering her mother's kitchen table in stacks.

_Have You Seen Rose? _

The picture had been taken at her eighteenth birthday, back when she was still with Jimmy. She'd forgotten about it entirely, forgotten that her mother had spent a year frantic and Mickey had spent a year as a murder suspect all because of the Doctor's dismal driving skills. For a moment she was tempted to laugh, then Detective Inspector Hardy began to flip almost casually through the rest of the file.

There were at least half a dozen pictures, some of them obscured and blurry, one of them in which she's holding the hand of an unrecognizable black mass she knows is a leather jacket obscured by a perception filter, looking ragged and worn after the destruction of 10 Downing Street. There were several more, each with her in varying states of disarray after some sort of adventure with the Doctor.

His look was half-sympathetic, half enraged, like he couldn't figure out whether or not to yell at her or reach out to help. His mouth set in a hard line; he was preparing to speak. It was one of the things that separated the Doctor from DI Hardy - the latter seemed to choose his words very carefully, before he spoke them.

"Rose Tyler, Powell Estate. Daughter of Pete and Jackie Tyler. Went missing at the age of nineteen, gone a whole year. Present at the destruction of Downing Street in 2005, presumed dead at the battle of Canary Wharf, late 2006."

He turned over the last picture. It was of a big block party, fireworks in the background, as Rose walked hand in hand with the Doctor - this Doctor, the one in front of her - as they walked down a street. He still had bits of cake with edible ball bearings on his collar, and Rose could still taste the words that had been on her lips.

_They keep on trying to split us up, but they never ever will._

She pressed her lips together in a straight line and waited for him to speak.

"And," he continued. "Even though Rose Tyler was presumed dead in 2006, she was last spotted about six months ago during the 2012 summer games."

He shut the folder, stood a little closer. Rose could feel the heat radiating from him (too hot and too human and so close that goosebumps spread like waves down neck and shoulders and back) and struggled not to say anything.

"I don't know who you are," he said, head dipping low, near hers. "Or what you've been through. I don't know who this," he gestured towards the Doctor in the picture, the Doctor who had just finished lauding edible ball bearings and was just about to tell her not to say never ever. "Is, but I am not him."

Now he stood up straight, his eyes hard, his jaw set.

"So I'm only going to say this once, Miss Tyler. _Stay away from my family._"

"What?"

"There's only one person I've ever told about that bloody box, and that's a little girl asking her father for bedtime stories. So whatever's in your head, if you go near her again, I will have you put in prison. Is that clear?"

Rose nodded mutely.

"If you need some sort of," he looked like he was struggling; his hand twitched, for a moment she thought he was going to reach up and start scratching the back of his neck. "Victim's assistance, then I can put you in touch with - someone, I suppose."

He fumbled around in his pocket, fishing around for something, and withdrew a slightly bent business card.

"That's my -" he paused, searching for a word. "Partner. Call her, if you have to."

* * *

_It hurt so much, last time. He thinks it won't be so bad this go round, if only for the fact that he won't be coming out of it again. _

_He doesn't set a destination. Doesn't try to, doesn't want to know where he'll end up. Doesn't want to know, experience, feel anything at all. The only thing he manages is a feeble goodbye to the TARDIS, an unspoken gesture of faith that she'll put him down somewhere safe, where he can't do any harm. She's protesting, shouting in his mind. Begging. If she'd been human, she might even have been crying. _

_The last thing he does is to reach out, to soothe her, send her his love. Then he burns his soul into a pocketwatch and this particular death is the sweetest relief he's ever known. _


	6. Chapter 6

There was a statue in the middle of town of a little girl. One of her small hands was raised as though she was waving in the direction of the ocean - waving hello, or waving farewell, it was impossible to tell. The girl's other hand laid on the head of a great hulking dog standing at alert by her side. It was obviously a treasured Broadchurch landmark; though this area seemed newer than the rest of the town, a small knot of restaurants and shops had grown up around it, leaving it thick with the smell of of ocean breeze and hot, salty seafood.

Once, Rose Tyler hadn't liked seafood much. But, as she sat cross-legged at the base of the statue of the waving girl with a basket of fish and chips in her lap, breaking it apart and popping it piece by piece into her mouth, there were things - and towns - that could grow on you.

DS Miller caught her with her mouth full.

"Rose? Rose Tyler?"

Since yesterday, Rose hadn't done much. Another trip back to the TARDIS would've been too risky; if she kept frequenting the little seaside shack, then someone was going to notice the pattern, maybe follow her in. It wasn't likely that anyone besides himself would really know what it was - whatever part of him was still the Doctor was apparently lucid enough to make up stories about flying blue boxes, but with the Doctor jumping straight in the front door with a subject had never been the way. You had to ease around the side, get him used to the temperature of the water before diving in, or else he'd throw a fit to rival any diva who had ever crossed a stage.

Going back to the Traders' might've risked another run-in with him — part of her, a very large part, raw and unused and aching, craved each interaction, but the other part - the practical part that was Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler's daughter, gritted her teeth and decided, against her own wishes, that right now she might do something very irresponsible - whether grabbing him by that stupid crooked lapel and giving his hair a good reason to stand on end, or throttling him out of pure frustration, she didn't know, and so stayed away for both her sake, and his.

Her options were limited. After a thorough examination of her assets, she came up with two chocolate mints, a broken hairbrush, and Detective Sergeant Miller's bent business card.

"I'm, ah, DS Miller - Ellie, you can call me Ellie."

"Like some chips, Ellie?"

The other woman looked skeptical as Rose raised her basket of chips. Their last meeting hadn't been exactly _friendly_, but Rose had aims to change that, and smiled brightly, scooting over to make room for her against the base of the statue.

"I'm fine, thanks. Listen, um - DI Hardy, he said you might need some help, and I've brought some forms-"

She was out of breath; she'd obviously come here in a hurry. There was a folder in her hand that was half-crumpled from the grip she had on it, and in the last two minutes, Ellie had checked her watch three times. Rose made a wild guess.

"Oh, you really don't like him, do you?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you're sort of strangling that folder there, and you keep looking at your watch."

Ellie completely and totally surprised Rose by slumping next to her on the ground. She blew out a rather unladylike breath, and started to speak as Rose held out her basket of chips. This time, Ellie snatched the largest one from the pile and popped it unceremoniously in her mouth.

"It's just that I had plans, and he comes storming in like he's the bloody Queen, volunteering me for god knows what while he just -"

Ellie made a strangled sort of noise and gestured uselessly at the air.

"Well, he would look absolutely lovely in a crown."

Maybe it was the fact that they were both sitting on the ground like teenagers. Maybe it was the fact that Ellie, a perfect stranger up until a few moments ago, had now eaten half her chips, or maybe it was just the image of Alec Hardy in a sparkly diamond tiara grumpily presiding over his subjects, but Rose, who'd had precious little to laugh about the last few days, shared a look with Ellie Miller before both women broke into breathless giggles. Rose was wiping tears from her eyes and trying to catch her breath when Ellie spoke again.

"I'm sorry, I'm not being very professional, am I?"

"That's all right. I can't imagine he's very easy to work with."

"He's a berk, that's what."

"Oh, it can't be that bad? Not bad on the eyes, him."

Ellie snorted. "Can you believe he - oh, listen to me. If you'll don't mind me saying, you don't sound like someone who needs victim's assistance."

Ellie held the half-bent file in her hand, flipping through forms for therapy, job placement, monetary aid. Rose shook her head.

"Did he show you the research he did? On me?"

"No. He was very odd about the whole thing. Just told me you might call, said you were troubled. Something about being the victim of a kidnapping."

"Bit rich, coming from him," Rose mumbled. Ellie gave her an odd look, but before she could ask any questions, Ellie looked up, obviously having recognized someone who was approaching.

He was a pleasant-looking man who seemed to be in his mid-thirties, bald, with a young baby strapped to his front. With the way Ellie leapt up and the smile that bloomed on her face, this had to be her family.

"Oh, hello you! We'll just be a minute, yeah. Rose, this is my husband Joe, and this is Freddie."

"Lo there! New in town, are we?"

Joe stuck out his hand for Rose to shake; when she took it, there was a sharp sting, like a static shock. He withdrew his hand quickly and shoved it in his pockets, but continued to offer Rose a warm smile.

"A bit, yeah," she said.

Rose took the moment to dispose of the trash from her lunch while Ellie cooed over her son and talked quietly with her husband. She watched them, and smiled, remembering briefly the warm press of his fingers between hers, the low timbre of the Doctor's voice saying Rose Tyler like nobody else ever did. They were obviously very much in love, Joe and Ellie, and she was glad for them.

Really, she was.

After a few moments Ellie kissed the baby, and kissed Joe, and the two of them wandered off, apparently to find a seat at the restaurant where Rose had gotten her fish and chips. Ellie wandered back over, and Rose was quiet for a moment.

"I do need your help, Ellie."

"First of all, go through the file of research he has on me. I want you to see what he means when he says he thinks I'm troubled. And if it's too weird for you, you can never talk to me again, if you want."

"I want you to look at all the pictures. The flyer from the estate, all the CCTV shots he's dug up, and especially that one from the Olympics. Look at the man in the picture, tell me if he doesn't look familiar to you."

"Money's on that he won't let ya see it. And if he does that, I want you to contact a boy named Adam Mitchell livin' in London with his mum. He'll tell ya exactly where I've been the last few weeks," Rose checked her watch. "Yeah, it's about that time - and that where I was wasn't anywhere near where-ever it is Detective Hardy thinks I've been."

Ellie was looking at her, eyes wide, like she was trying to decide if Rose was out of her mind.

"And if it's not all too weird for ya by then - I want you to run all the same background on him that he's run on me. If everything turns up clear, then I won't bother you again."

Ellie's hand was covering her mouth; she her gaze had turned inward, like she was trying to make a decision.

"I'm not losing my job over this."

Rose gave her a considering look. "I would never expect you to. But if I'm right, this could all be tied up in what happened to Danny Latimer, and I'd never forgive myself if both of you weren't as well-prepared as possible."

"If you're lying to me - "

"I'm not."

The other woman grabbed her purse, tucked it underneath her arm. She left the folder full of victim's assistance forms lying on the base of the statue. She was halfway to the restaurant when she stopped, turned around.

"Rose?"

"Yeah?"

"He's important to you. Hardy."

Rose tucked her hand in the pocket of her jeans, cocked her eyebrow in question.

"I'm a detective," said Ellie. "You keep touching where your wedding ring should be."

* * *

For some reason, she wasn't expecting him when she climbed the stairs to her room. It might have been the light, but he looked stark white and miserable, the line in his brow furrowed with pain. On a reflex, she caught his gaze, gave him a soft smile.

His dark eyes went shuttered and he closed off at the sight of her, not even acknowledging that she was there as he turned his back disappeared into his suite.


	7. Chapter 7

Rose sat on the beach until the sun went down and the tide came in.

She kept her eyes closed, toes dug firmly into the sand, as the water rushed in, soaking her jeans and lapping at her waist in tiny waves. She moved slightly with the push-pull of the tide, making no actual conscious motion except to raise to her lips one of three small circlets that served as a pendant on the chain that hung around her neck.

The first was a gold band set with a single sapphire, which had once belonged to an old woman in another universe. The Doctor - fumbling, nervous, but absolutely sure that this was the one - had purchased it from an antique store and kept it in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets along with a book from the forty-eighth century about human mating rituals.

He gave it to her completely by accident, on a warm night in August when the baby TARDIS had, inexplicably, decided to turn from a hairbrush into a ring box, right as he handed it over to her. It wasn't at all according to his very romantic plan, but it was very them. (She'd tease him, later, about taking too long and how even as an infant, the TARDIS knew him better than he knew himself.)

The second was a plain gold band, a woman's size six. Once, there had been a tan line on her hand that matched it, but that had long since disappeared.

It was the third ring, slightly larger than her own, that she held pressed in a kiss,her eyes closed as a quiet night set over Broadchurch.

Her marriage had been, for all its extraordinary length, its time-traveling police boxes and nights spent under alien skies, truly, properly normal. Dirty dishes, Thursday afternoon sex, days when she couldn't get enough of him, and days when she just wanted him out of her hair. Anniversary dinners and arguments that hurt her heart, and days where she hated him, just a little bit.

This might have been one of those days, if she'd been his wife - if he'd been, in any small measure, her husband.

* * *

_"You're quiet."_

_There's a waterfall in this hotel room. A little spout, opening up from the wall on the balcony and cascading over a mantle of polished rocks, only to spill over the edge into a small, waist-high pool rimmed with marble. It makes a soft bubbling sound, a white noise filling the background of their non-conversation, and Rose is utterly thankful for it._

_They'd come to this place years before, in another universe. She remembers flicking water at him from the waterfall - the bark of indignant laughter, the merry glint of challenge in his eyes, and the warm tug of his arm around her waist as he grabbed her and flung her, squealing, under the spray. Maybe, she thinks, he's brought her here because of that shared memory - because of the warmth that had been between them, then._

_Because he's trying to get it back._

_"Doctor, I -"_

_She covers her mouth with one hand, getting up from the bed where she'd been sitting next to him in awkward silence. There's no good reason for it, the silence - even their quiet moments are filled with an understanding, an unspoken thing written out in her fingers tangling in the hairs at the back of his neck while she watches telly, in his fingernails scraping lightly over her forearm as he reads a book. There's no reason for the sudden change. She can't pinpoint when it started. For weeks, months now, there's a twin of every moment whenever she blinks, sleeps, takes a moment to breathe._

_She can't stop seeing him._

_She comes close to the edge of the pool. The spray is cool on her face; she runs her finger through a line of condensation on the marble rim of the basin, and tries not to hear the the way his eyes are pleading behind her._

_"It's nothing."_

_"Rose," a short exhale. "Please, don't do this. Not again."_

_Somewhere and somewhen, there is another Doctor. Another. Her mind recoils from real and fake on instinct; she has been convinced of him since his single heart quickened against her palm, since his careful, stoic, _If you want_ and the quiet desperation behind it. Here was the Doctor, shuttered and closed, and here again, heart in his eyes and words full of promises. She chose happiness, and never looked back._

_That was the problem._

_The bed behind her creaks as the Doctor gets to his feet; a moment later his hands are warm on her waist. He presses a tiny row of kisses to her shoulder, slides his hand from her hip to lie flat on her stomach. She keeps her eyes fixed on the little waterfall as it seems to swell and gush all the harder, and doesn't take his hand._

_"You're not happy."_

_"No."_

_She loves him. Her heart swells with it, aches with it, because he's here for her to love, but he isn't, because for every kiss and bark of laughter, for every breathless adventure there's a moment, when it's all said and done - when she lies bare against his chest and he mumbles, contentedly, into her hair - when Rose Tyler remembers that he's happy here - and somewhere else, he isn't._

_"Have I," he glances down, the tips of his fingers dancing over her knuckles, on the basin. "Have I done something?"_

_"No," she said, and then, after a beat, after his dark eyes catch hers as he brings her to face him: "Yes."_

_"Tell me." He cups her chin, and oh, his eyes are sparkling and his thumb trembles as it passes over her lips. She leans a little on the marble basin, fingers going white as she grips the edge. The waterfall is a roar in her ears now. "Rose -"_

_"I left him," she gasps, and there it is, this thing they've never spoken about. Her hand flies up over her face. "I was so, so tired, and- and I loved you more than anything, both of you, and I left him. He's alone. He's alone out there and he's going to do something stupid, I know he will. He's going to get himself killed, or worse, and there's no-one there to hold his hand."_

_He swallows, once, and can't look her in the eye. Instead, his fingers trail idly through the water as she watches his face for a reaction._

_"Do you regret it? Staying?"_

_Ask her six months ago and her answer would have been immediate. A month, even, and she's not sure this much uneasiness would be sitting in her heart. Now every conversation goes back to that beach, to her choice, to blue and brown and_I love you, Rose Tyler_, and the _does it need saying?_ whispered in muted agony._

_"Can you tell me, honestly, that he's all right?"_

_His eyes flutter shut. "You know that I can't."_

_There's a moment of silence, where the only noise is the water, and the ache of the void between them. Then he draws a ragged breath and moves to cup her face. One hand is wet from where it trailed through the water; they both tremble._

_"No one else," he croaks. "Not one other person in any universe is worth this."_

_He kisses her, hot and hard and brief, and then he picks up his bag, next to hers, and is gone. He leaves a mark, when he goes - a cooling trail down her skin that leaves her shivering._

* * *

_The TARDIS materializes on the lawn outside the balcony of the hotel room. He doesn't leave it - she never sees him, but it's there when she wakes, and when she falls into bed._

_The first week, she tries to puzzle it out. Over and over again the scene replays in her head, two Doctors, one Rose, a confession and a kiss and a TARDIS disappearing forever. Choosing differently wouldn't alleviate any pain or guilt; the thought of him on his own - her him, the one she's been devoted to for a decade - leaves her weak and retching._

_The second week, she rails at him. She has whole conversations with him in her head about the width and breadth and color of his trespasses. She calls him names, can almost hear his laughing (low and dark and Northern, this time) when she runs out of words and her voice is just a broken chorus of _stupid, stupid, stupid.

_At the beginning of the third week, she bangs on the TARDIS door so hard a splinter of wood jams into her right knuckle. She doesn't notice._

_"You bastard," she hisses. He looks up from the console and his face goes passively blank. "I risked everything. I risked my life. I risked Mickey's life and Jake's life and a dozen other lives and didn't even care, because you were alone and I promised."_

_"Rose, you're bleeding."_

_She ignores him._

_"And then it worked. I saw the end of the world and so much blood, Doctor, but I got through. I finally got through and for a minute, for a minute I think, we'll be happy. I think, I showed ya, I finally showed ya that I'm never leavin', and what do you do? You manipulate me, both of ya, and then you swan off so I can't even - I can't even - Oh God, right there in front of 'im", she chokes out. "He watched us."_

_"Rose," he says again, his voice soft. God she missed his voice. "You're bleeding."_

_She is - great dripping drops, right onto the TARDIS grating. Her entire right hand looks like something out of a horror show. Only then does she notice the throb of pain, and it's the last bit of thread in her unraveling. She breaks._

_He opens his arms wide and she goes into them like a child, gasping into the fabric of his coat. After weeks of imagining him, of talking to him, screaming at him, her thoughts won't coalesce and all she can do is feel, as his chest rumbles underneath her cheek, his large hands pass over her hair, and his voice, low and reverent just a little bit broken, murmurs in her ear._

_Guilt that is bright and raw rakes her chest as he pulls back, just a little, to see to her injured hand. There are dark circles under his eyes like she's never seen, and he's so, so thin that halfway through his ministrations, him with the sonic screwdriver poised at her hand, she darts in for another hug._

_"I bled on your coat," she says, after a moment, a pair of eyes peeking up from his shoulder._

_He chuckles. "I don't care."_

_She holds up her hand. "I broke your TARDIS."_

_The Doctor takes the injured hand by the wrist and presses a soft kiss to each finger._

_"I don't care."_

_The next morning, she wakes to a room filled with every color of rose imaginable. He's using one - a deep, vibrant red - to paint circular patterns on her bare hip._

_"I didn't know which ones to get," he says, his mouth warm against her neck. "So I just got them all."_

* * *

Rose Tyler stood up.

It didn't look like much, the standing. She tripped, twice, and her wet jeans made an uncomfortable squeak. There was no small amount of sloshing and effort required to get back to a place where she could stand without wobbling, and after that it was a long trek back up into Broadchurch. By the time she got back to the city proper every bone ached; she had rubbed blisters into her feet, and hunger clawed at her stomach.

But she was still moving.

Dinner at the Traders' was over by now, and the closest thing open was a small market two blocks down. It shouldn't have surprised her, to see him standing there, scanning items through the self-checkout as she hobbled her way into the market. She laughed - _of course he would be here_ - and meant to go about her business, grab an energy bar and a drink, and get on with it.

Of course, things with the Doctor had never been that simple, and Time Lord though he was not, his senses were sharp. He caught her eye, narrowed his own, and then looked away.

Oh, why not?

He was digging through his wallet when she approached, casually leaning on the side of the self-checkout to rest her feet. She narrowed her eyes at the bag he was carrying.

"Are you going on a date, Detective Inspector?"

He ignored her.

"Flowers, wine, _and_ chocolates. She must be special."

The detective took his bag and grumbled something unintelligible at her.

"What was that?"

"I said, it's not a date. It's a…meeting. With a colleague."

"Some colleague."

"It's dinner. With my DS." Rose's eyebrow shot up. "And her _husband._"

"DS Miller's lovely," said Rose. "She was very kind, when you sent her to me. Thank you for that."

There was a pause, in which DI Hardy stared at her openly. It was a different sort of stare, not the one where he looked at her like she was a puzzle he needed to solve, but something else.

After a moment, he coughed, and gestured at his bag.

"It's too much."

She looked at him, curious.

"This. It's too much."

His bag. Flowers, wine, chocolates.

Oh.

Oh, _Doctor._

For the first time since coming to Broadchurch, Rose Tyler looked at the Doctor and gave him her most brilliant grin.

"It's perfect."

_No-one else in the entire universe is worth this._

_But you are._


	8. Chapter 8

The familiar _whirr_ of the sonic screwdriver briefly filled the small hallway, casting it in a soft blue glow. After a moment, the lock to DI Hardy's hotel room clicked open, and the hallway was once again draped in darkness.

Rose pushed the door open, holding her breath - _step heel to toe, shallow breaths through the nose_ - It hadn't been too long since she'd left Hardy at the supermarket, but it had taken time to walk back here, to wolf down her dinner and get cleaned up. She'd been so, so close to just collapsing into bed when she realized that this was the perfect time to go hunting for the watch.

Then it had taken time to fumble through her belongings, to gauge whether or not Becca had shut down the bar for the evening, or if the other patrons were prone to wander in the hallways. She'd fallen into the habit, over the last few centuries, of carrying a small set of lockpicks with her, but they'd seemed to be missing the previous day. She'd spent a good deal of time trying to devise a way to con her way into Alec's room - Becca was nice enough, and by now Rose was an excellent liar - but then she'd remembered: the sonic screwdriver, in a bag next to the bed, nestled between the trousers of a brown pinstriped suit and a jar of ridiculous alien hair gel.

That'd do.

The lights were still on in Hardy's hotel room. Outside, Rose could hear the sound of the other patrons making their way up the stairs to bed - _move along the wall, where the floor is less likely to creak, and make sure your weight is evenly distributed_ - The room itself was mostly empty, with not much sign that he'd been here at all except for a suitcase sitting in an old, high-backed chair piled with several suits in varying degrees of untidyness, all the same shade of bleak navy blue, and several skinny ties - blue, black, grey - hung over the side.

The Doctor, it seemed, hadn't lost his penchant for adopting a uniform and sticking to it.

She rummaged around in the suitcase but quickly gave it up as a bad job. Other than his clothes, there was nothing there but an obviously-unused shaving kit and an Agatha Christie novel. Besides that, his bag was plain, and only had the one compartment - no little hideaway pockets for the watch to be tucked away in.

The bed was neatly made, the TV stand free of the Doctor's customary pocket detritus. There was a banana peel in the bin, and it put a small smile on Rose's face as she searched the rest of the room, working her way around to the bedside table, which held -

Rose snatched the leather wallet up, flipping it open, running her fingers along the cracked leather and broken stitching, the worn edges of the photograph of a teenage girl. Hadn't she just seen him at the market, paying for wine and chocolates and flowers?

Rose's head whipped around and she immediately ducked, cursing herself. Belatedly she realized that her timing hadn't accounted for the fact that Alec Hardy did not have the Doctor's unstoppable gob, that he probably would have begged off early. There was only one other room - a small bathroom, to which the door was closed.

Her eyes narrowed, and she took one step, two - edging around the bed, closer to the door, when she noticed something.

The low hum of the heating unit shut abruptly off, and the room was utterly and completely silent. No running water, no one shuffling about behind the door, no turn of knobs or opening of cabinets. Not even the soft breathing of someone trying to keep very, very quiet.

She froze. And then her eyes scanned the door from top to bottom, until, her heartbeat thumping against her chest a little more with each passing second, Rose noticed a thin line of red peeking out from the tiny space between the bottom of the door and the floor.

She dashed forward and wrenched the door open.

_It's the middle of the night, when it happens. He's been weak for months but this is different, the way he kisses her, the way his hand brushes her cheek, like he's memorizing her face for a long journey._

A crumpled heap of gangly limbs, Alec laid with his head twisted at an awkward angle. A smear of blood decorated the corner of the sink, and the water was still running.

_"Rose Tyler," he says, his eyes crinkling, but the end of the sentence fades away as his hand falls from her face._

It was three heartbeats before she was able to move - another two before she flushed with relief to see him take a strangled, ragged breath. Her hands were a blur, then - wiping away blood, checking he hadn't hurt his neck, fingers pressing into his pulse point. His heartbeat was staggered and uneven.

_The first thing she does is close his eyes - she can't bear to see them frozen and still - and then sets course for a largely unsettled world in the constellation of Kasterborous._

999, she decided. She knew plenty about looking after Time Lords, but for now this was a human man.

She thought he might've regained consciousness, for a moment, when he turned his head and moaned. Rose caught a flash of panicked brown eyes and reached instinctively for his hand, running her thumb along the base of his.

"S'okay, Doctor," she murmured as his eyes drifted shut again. "I've got you."

_It takes her three tries and two bouts of agonized retching before she manages to get him into the sunlight of what would have been his home, in another universe. She rocks him in her arms until sunset, and then buries him beneath red grass and wind chiming through silver trees._

Her husband's wedding ring fit snugly onto his left hand. When the paramedics arrived, no one questioned that she should ride in the ambulance.

* * *

Somewhere between a lot of very shouty medical professionals shoving her out of the way and the interminable waiting for a diagnosis, a form had been shoved in Rose's hands. She stared at it for the better part of fifteen minutes, her eyes flickering back and forth between the solid wooden door that separated the waiting room from Emergency, and the blank white spaces on the form.

Rose knew next to nothing about Alec Hardy, other than his name. She bit her lip as she stared at entries for things like his mobile number and his medical history, cursing herself for not having done any more research on him than she had. What was his address? He couldn't live at the Traders'. Who was his next of kin? Was the teenage girl in the wallet his daughter?

Was she someone The TARDIS had created as part of his human background, or was she a living, breathing person, someone Alec Hardy loved?

Biting her lip, Rose scribbled in what she knew, and faked the rest. Without quite knowing why she listed his address as her room at the Traders', and added aspirin and pears as an afterthought to the list on the back of his allergies.

Six hours, fourteen minutes, and one diagnosis later, Rose sat next to a hospital bed, one hand wrapped around a paper cup of tea that was growing cold. There was a pastry in her lap, a gift from one of the nurses, but she hadn't touched it, hadn't even unwrapped it yet, for fear of making a noise and ruining the picture Alec Hardy made in the dimmed lighting of the hotel room.

Somewhere, in the rush, his hair had gotten rumpled and was sticking up at all ends. His chest rose and fell with the sleep of heavily sedated, head tilted backwards on the pillow, exposing the long column of his throat, and his long-fingered hands were turned upwards - one falling against his leg, and the other - the one with the gold wedding band on the third finger - was wrapped tightly around Rose's.

She'd been absently stroking the inside of his wrist, waiting for someone to return with a diagnosis when his fingers had curled upward of their own volition, snaking their way through hers and holding them firmly. Her palms were beginning to sweat, and twice she'd had to bite her lips against an itch she couldn't scratch, but it was worth it.

It was the first time she'd held hands with the Doctor in almost two hundred years.

_Cardiac dysrhythmia._ A dysfunction of the heart's electrical activity, causing irregular beating: slowing, accelerating, or even stopping entirely. Often non-life threatening, but some cases could - and would eventually - cause cardiac arrest.

He had medicine - which he hadn't been taking - but according to the elderly cardiologist she'd spoken to in the waiting room, he was going to need surgery, and there was a solid chance that he wouldn't survive it.

This was normally the part of the adventure where she'd make a list. Come up with a plan. Do something impossible, play the part of the immortal Time Lord with a magic wand who could make it all better. She'd learned from the best, and it was a defensive pattern that was nigh-engraved into her soul, after all these years.

But she was far too tired for that, and there was an older pattern of behavior, one leftover from a shopgirl who'd been madly in love with a soldier in leather. Instead of planning, instead of scheming, instead of dashing forward into the most dangerous solution and hoping for the best, Rose Tyler took a deep breath, squeezed the hand she was holding, and resolved that the Doctor would not die.

Sighing, he turned his head toward her, nose turned downward into the pillow. For a moment Rose felt his fingers tighten around hers, and then suddenly her hand was cold and clammy from the absence of his and she was staring into blinking brown eyes.

"Hey, hey, careful," said Rose, putting her hand on his back to steady him as he attempted to sit up. "You've got a gash in your head the size of a planet."

"What am I doing here?"

"You hit your head."

"What are _you_ doing here?" He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, his movements becoming less wobbly, more focused. His eyes darted around the room, settling determinedly on the exit.

Oh, bloody hell.

"I heard the banging," underneath her hand, his muscles clenched up, and Rose withdrew it with as much diginity as she could, instead folding her arms across her chest. "I wanted to make sure you were all right."

Outside, the muffled sounds of a gurney rushing past put a steely ache in Rose's stomach - leaving him hadn't been an option, but how to explain that?

Hardy's long fingers curled into the sheets.

"And you...what? Stayed all night, what'd you do that for?"

"No emergency contacts," Rose waved her hand over his battered leather wallet. "No next of kin - somebody had to look after you."

"Appointed yourself for that job, did you?"

Oh, for the love of -

Rose fixed him with a stare. It was a long and practiced stare, from years and years of listening to him insult interplanetary royalty and stick his fingers in strange jam jars.

Alec Hardy's rudeness was different from the Doctor's - less habitual carelessness and more focused vitriol, as though he were angry at the whole universe, and couldn't stop bits of it from escaping from time to time.

She expected a battle of wills. This was the Doctor at his bitterest, and she meant to start right off with letting him know he wasn't about to scare her away, no matter how nasty he got. It was a common tactic from their earlier days together, bringing to bear every last shred of stubbornness she had - and Rose surmised that, at the very least, she'd have to sit through several long diatribes and a smattering of aspersions to her character before he gave up insulting her as a bad job.

What she didn't expect was for Alec's shoulders to slump ever so slightly, and for his face to twist into an embarrassed grimace.

"That was rude."

"Oh, spot on, a biscuit for the detective."

The flurry of commotion outside had grown louder now. Rose could hear the scraping of chairs, the raised voices of doctors, and the too-harsh sounds of a heart monitor in concert with the sound of a child crying.

They were quiet for a moment, listening, and Rose turned when Alec darted out, grabbed her wrist.

"Rose," his voice was low, and rough, unused and tinged with desperation. "You musn't tell anyone about this. They find out I'm sick, they take me off the case. I don't want to come off this case. I need to finish this case."

"You're not invincible, you know - your heart's on the fritz, you need-"

"This is my career," he cut her off, fingers tightening around her wrist. His thumb, in particular, traced an unconscious path over her pulse point, and Rose shivered.

"This is my_ life_."

The protest that had been on her lips died, silence punctuated by a high, harsh tone - the sound of a flatlining heart monitor just outside the door. The person the doctors fussed over outside - whoever it was, likely another cardiac patient - had been lost.

An ordinary person, just like the one standing in front of her - just as alive, and just as so quickly not. Rose's eyes burned as she heard the sound in conjunction with the memory of her husband's last, unfinished sentence, and was only shaken out of it by Alec Hardy's low voice rumbling her name.

"Rose."

"Yeah," she said, swiping at her eyes. "Yeah, I won't tell."


End file.
